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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James from London" data-source="post: 13096" data-attributes="member: 22">12/Dec/83: EMERALD POINT N.A.S.: Episode 11 v. 15/Dec/83: KNOTS LANDING: Denials v. 16/Dec/83: DALLAS: Barbecue Four v. 16/Dec/83: FALCON CREST: Coup d'Etat v. 17/Dec/83: THE YELLOW ROSE: Only the ProudTurns out I was somewhat premature in pronouncing Dr Lantry dead at the end of last week’s FALCON CREST. He hangs on through most of this week’s instalment, off screen but on life support, before eventually expiring towards the end of the ep. Meanwhile, word comes through early in this week’s YELLOW ROSE that Jeb Hollister's shooting was not fatal.There are still two Soap Land funerals in this week - Chip Roberts’ in KNOTS LANDING and Captain Martin Farrell's in EMERALD POINT. “He was a louse but he deserves a decent funeral,” says Chip’s estranged sister Angie Fenice, while there is no question that Captain Farrell — whose body is finally returned from Vietnam eight years after he went missing in action — warrants a hero's send off.Before both burials, a woman visits the departed to pay her respects in private. On EMERALD POINT, the grieving widow, Octopussy, renders a tearful speech over her husband's flag-draped coffin. (“Oh Martin, how am I going to live without you?”) On KNOTS, Lilimae delivers an emotional monologue to Chip in his open casket. "That smile of yours hides the hardest heart I’ve ever known,” she tells him. “I pity the angels in Heaven if you ever decide to get something you want from them … I wish I could talk you.”In parting, Octopussy takes off her wedding ring and places it on the coffin (a gesture reminiscent of Karen’s at Sid’s graveside) while Lilimae takes a single rose and places it on Chip’s chest. This might be the season where relationships between older women and younger men came into vogue, but I’m not sure Alexis’s desire for Dex or Sue Ellen’s for Peter will ever equal the intensity or depth of feeling Lilimae has towards Chip - an intensity all the stronger for never being fully articulated. (“I knew you needed love and I wanted to be the one to give it to you, me and so many others.”)Captain Farrell’s funeral is a solemn, dignified affair with the military out in full force. The same cannot be said for Chip’s. “What a load of bull!” snaps Angie Fenice at the graveside in response to the poetic eulogy delivered by the minister (moonlighting from his day job as Maggie Gioberti’s curmudgeonly boss on FALCON CREST). She continues to mouth off until Diana finally slaps her face. For all their differences, however, both funerals look as though they could have been filmed at the same location — but then as far as I can tell nearly all Soap Land funerals seem to take place under the same tree on the same hillside in the same picturesque cemetery, with what looks like the Colby mausoleum from the end of DYNASTY Season 2 looming in the background.Over on DALLAS, Mark Graison invites Pam to spend a couple of days on a private island he’s thinking of buying. Preoccupied with business, she declines. On EMERALD POINT, good girl Kay asks if she can tag along with new husband Casey Denault on a business trip he is making to an equally small and secluded island. He turns her down. “It’s just a crummy little island in the middle of nowhere,” he explains, "nothing but a ground station for the Adams Industries communication satellite." Bad girl Hilary doesn’t wait for permission — she stows away on Casey’s plane, much to his annoyance. Inevitably, they end up stranded on the island overnight during a storm. They shelter in a bar, where, to Casey’s disapproval, Hilary does her own version of the Soap Land bad girl boogie (previously performed by Sammy Jo on DYNASTY and Christie Kovacks on FLAMINGO ROAD), as a bunch of horny workers look on appreciatively.Given that everything else about the scene looks like it could be from a colorised version of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, the choice of music to accompany Hilary’s dance — a soundalike version of Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This” — feels incongruously contemporary. There’s more ‘80s music in this week’s KNOTS when Cathy Geary gets up to sing with the band at the Cattle Club. To have Cathy not only look like Ciji but sing like her too is a brazen move. And just as Ciji’s debut song was a Journey cover — “Open Arms” — so is Cathy’s - “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)”. Moreover, Gary happens upon her performance the same way he did Ciji’s, and is just as impressed now as he was then. The show makes at least some attempt to ring the changes by presenting Cathy’s number in a far less magical way than Ciji's. The song itself is rockier, more generically ‘80s, as are the band she’s singing with (cue close ups of fingerless leather gloves playing the keyboards) and the whole performance is filmed in a much more perfunctory fashion than any of Ciji’s ever were. There are no pretensions to artistic greatness here.Still, it represents a victory of sorts for Gary, who, as part of his attempt to turn Cathy into Ciji, has been urging her to try singing for the last couple of episodes. And just as Gary persuaded Cathy to give up her waitressing job a few weeks ago so Bobby tries to do the same thing to Jenna on this week’s DALLAS after seeing her hassled by some customers (among them — irony of ironies — one Harris Ryland, back when he still had hair and Mother would let him out to play in cowboy bars). Again, Jenna is depicted as less malleable and more worldly wise than her KNOTS counterpart. “I don’t know who I am anymore!” wails Cathy this week, while Jenna stands firm when a Ewing man attempts to take over her life. “Finally I’m making my own way,” she tells Bobby. "I don’t owe anyone anything and I don’t wanna start now.” Over on FALCON CREST, Angela gives Terry no choice about her new job — to use her position as the Giobertis’ house guest to spy on Maggie and Chase. A problem arises, however, when Maggie throws Terry out of the house after discovering that she has wheedled $25,000 out of their father.Where KNOTS now has the Cattle Club, DALLAS has jettisoned its equivalent, the Cattleman’s Club, in favour of the altogether smarter Oil Baron's Club. In a heartening example of the American Dream in action, one of Lute Mae’s nameless hookers from FLAMINGO ROAD has been transformed into Dora Mae, the sleekly sophisticated manageress at the Oil Baron’s. The subject of the American Dream comes up in this week’s KNOTS as well. "Tony always wanted the American Dream,” says Angie Fenice, referring to Chip by his real name. "I guess pretending to be someone else was the only way he thought he could get it." It’s very interesting to me that whenever the American Dream is referred to in Soap Land it’s presented in the most cynical terms, as an empty illusion or corrupted ideal. Again it begs the question — is the Soap Land genre celebrating or critiquing the abundance and excesses of '80s wealth it depicts?That said, a more idealistic perspective is given voice by a new arrival in DALLAS this week, Edgar Randolph. When asked by Ray why he gave up a lucrative law career to take on a lower paid job with the government, he solemnly explains “it was something that Sam Culver said to me years ago. He said, 'Son, you have to give something back to the country that gave you so much.'” With hindsight, however, we know that Edgar’s sense of honour is a crucial part of what leads to his downfall as another doomed Soap Land patsy, following in the footsteps of FALCON CREST’s Dr Lantry, DALLAS’s Walt Driscoll and DYNASTY’s Joseph Anders and Neil McVane. Everyone, Soap Land seems to be saying, even a man as principled and patriotic as Edgar, can be corrupted.But while the American dream might be an intangible enough concept to undermine without Soap Land needing to nail its political colours to the mast, the American military is something else. It is, after all, a reality; it exists in the real world. For EMERALD POINT to critique the military the way the rest of Soap Land routinely debunks any notion of fair play in corporate business, politics or the media would be tantamount to televisual treason. Yet there the military stands, a monolith draped in a stars and stripes flag, right at the centre of EMERALD POINT. Whatever dramatic machinations the show can provide — at least of the twisted, devious, corrupt kind we’re accustomed to seeing in Soap Land — must necessarily happen around its edges. This can make for some interestingly contorted storylines, Tiffany Case’s unlikely transformation into a Russian spy being a case in point.In this week’s FALCON CREST, the same psychiatrist who declared Julia sane enough to stand trial now diagnoses her as psychotic — suggesting it is prison itself that has driven her mad. Meanwhile on THE YELLOW ROSE, Whit Champion follows in the footsteps of Cole Gioberti and Gary Ewing to become the latest wrongly accused blond when he is arrested for Jeb Hollister’s shooting by the most crooked sheriff this side of FLAMINGO ROAD. But Whit is the first Soap Land inmate to find himself a target for unwanted male attention behind bars. The sequence where his fellow prisoners holler appreciative comments at him from their cells is like a scene from SILENCE OF THE LAMBS crossed with Todd Browning’s FREAKS.Last week’s DYNASTY ended with a romance novel of a scene in which Blake proposed marriage to Krystle on a hearthside rug in front of an open fire, umpteen candles twinkling in the background. Needless to say, she accepted. “I have asked this beautiful lady at my side for her hand in marriage and she has graciously accepted,” announces Clayton Farlow at the end of this week’s DALLAS as he and Ellie gather the family together on the cardboard patio. This week’s KNOTS, meanwhile, finishes with Karen staring blankly at her own reflection in the bathroom mirror having just been confronted by Mack, Val and Eric about her drug use.Set against the novelty of the Seaview Circle matriarch coming unglued, there’s a vague sense of the other soaps turning the clock back: Blake and Krystle are reunited, there’s a white-haired man at the head of the Ewing dinner table once again, and FALCON CREST resurrects the plot of its very first episode when Chase invokes the terms of his grandfather’s will in order to cut Angela out of Falcon Crest once and for all. “When I’m through with him, Chase Gioberti’s gonna wish he’d died and gone to Hell!” vows Angela just as the frame freezes. Finally, the gloves are off.And this week’s Top 5 are …1 (1) KNOTS LANDING2 (2) THE YELLOW ROSE3 (4) FALCON CREST4 (3) DALLAS5 (6) EMERALD POINT N.A.S.</blockquote>

Verification: Who played Sue Ellen in Dallas?